Thursday, October 18, 2012

Had a nice chat yesterday with some great folks from Sudbury, including an exercise physiologist/kinesiologist who works in a paediatric weight management program. We were chatting about whether or not I would consider a trench talk that highlighted paediatric obesity topics.

Now I've often been asked about whether or not I see kids, or whether I'd be interested in setting up a program to help.

Here are my two lines in the sand.

1. I'd only ever recommend involving kids directly in treatment if they already suffered with weight responsive conditions (diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea, etc.), and then only within the context of a program that explicitly excluded weight as a focus of treatment.

2. For kids without weight responsive conditions I'd only want to work with their parents.

I worry about the impact a tertiary or community based medical weight management focus might have on kids' relationships with food, body image and self esteem, and so for the kids with problems, they might benefit from a clinic focusing on improving their specific health problems through lifestyle change and a non-weight centric focus, while for kids who don't have problems - studies to date suggest parent exclusive treatment is just as good or better than treatment that directly involves the children.

Now I know nothing about the program in the graphic up above - and truly it may be a world class program - but how might you feel if you were a kid who needed to go there? Would you feel "new hope"? Or might you feel shame? I'm not saying it's fair, just that society has associated weight with personal failure, and while I disagree with the linkage I don't think my disagreement will change the fact that there are likely kids going to New Hope, where fair or not the name alone gives them cause not for hope, but for despair.

Subscribe via Email

About Me

Family doc, Associate Prof. at the University of Ottawa, Author of The Diet Fix, and founder of Ottawa's non-surgical Bariatric Medical Institute - a multi-disciplinary, ethical, evidence-based nutrition and weight management centre. Nowadays I'm more likely to stop drugs than start them. You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook.

Creative Commons License

Disclaimer

Any medical discussion on this page is intended to be of a general nature only. This page is not designed to give specific medical advice. If you have a medical problem you should consult your own physician for advice specific to your own situation. The mission of this blog is to provide readers with critical appraisals of nutrition and weight related claims, products and policies so as to allow readers to make more informed decisions in those areas.

The author will not post anything related to any of his patients personal medical histories or circumstances without their explicit written permission.

No personal information is collected by this website. If you'd like to leave a comment on an article, you can do so on this blog's Facebook page.

This site is hosted free of charge by Google's Blogger platform and is intended not only for allied health professionals but also for interested members of the general public.

If you have any concerns feel free to email me at yonifreedhoff [{@}] gmail dot . com